Rerouting PUD entrance would improve public safety

September 19, 2008|By MARTY McKIERNAN

When tragedies occur, surviving family and friends struggle to find solace. Perhaps the recent bicyclist fatalities and recent crime which has targeted off-campus housing can have a silver-lining. These incidents should result in local developers and elected officials, who are responsible for safety of residents, to take a more critical view before making decisions which impact safety. There is an opportunity to do so right now, by rerouting an access drive to a pending development planned for off-campus University of Notre Dame students. A Planned Unit Development was recently approved by the county for a site just north of Little Flower Catholic Church, for students. Perhaps in an attempt to make concessions to two businesses concerned with sharing the access drive off of Ironwood Road, the developer eliminated that access for students from their original plan and made the sole student access through the intersection of George and McErlain streets. This means that, as approved, high density traffic will traverse the neighborhood on its way to and from campus. Rerouting to reinstate Ironwood as the primary access (with McErlain/George, as emergency only) is a nominal change that can significantly improve safety for residents of both this PUD and the neighborhood. Factors in the recent bicyclist fatalities were, in the instance of the 21-year-old driver, alcohol, and for the other, a distraction which led to the driver leaving his lane. Alcohol impairment while driving is highest in the college-age demographic, and reasons for distractions are many. Add on student specific factors such as fatigue (second highest cause of traffic fatalities after alcohol) from all-nighters, rushing to class, texting, etc.. Mix in those residents who walk or bicycle on these horribly inadequate streets, and you have the recipe for more tragedies. These roads are extremely narrow, include hills and very poor sight lines, and have only a few streetlights and no sidewalks. To underscore the inadequate nature of these streets for high density usage, note that a development on Vaness Street, on the south end of this neighborhood, was approved last year. As a requirement for approval, access onto Burdette Drive was prohibited, and Vaness had to be upgraded to current standards. The traffic dangers associated with students driving this neighborhood go beyond bicyclists. Automobile accidents will also involve pedestrians and, of course, other vehicles in this neighborhood. Recent crime at off-campus housing, including the mugging of a couple at Clover Ridge and a rash of burglaries at Irish Crossings, remind us that off-campus housing draws the criminal element. If Ironwood were made the primary access, it would be much more difficult for criminals to reach this housing with stealth. And very significantly, it would also eliminate criminals from using the neighborhood streets and finding additional victims -- neighborhood residents and students on foot and bike. Also significant for the neighborhood is the drop in property values that will occur with the PUD being sited here. Sending traffic to Ironwood should mitigate that as well. Usually, the costs for improving safety are prohibitive, explaining the slow progress in creating dedicated pathways for bicyclists and pedestrians in our community and why it feels there are never enough police officers on the payroll to help thwart crime. But in this case, simply by rerouting, the developer could improve safety from both traffic and crime standpoints, and also help protect against property value decline in the neighborhood, at little if any cost. Costs to upgrade the access to Ironwood would likely be more than offset by savings, since the developer would no longer be bound to upgrading two stretches of road in the neighborhood to county standards, his current obligation. So hopefully this can become an example of something good coming from the recent tragedies and criminal activities within the community -- if county officials within the Area Plan Commission, and Engineering and Building Departments and Legacy Home Builders, involved in approving the details for and building this housing will take a more critical look at this site and re-route the access, more of the same can be averted. And, hopefully, an onerous process for approving this change can be avoided. Marty McKiernan grew up in the neighbhorhood of the planned urban development he writes about. His mother still lives there and he lives in Niles.